This Is A Direct Appeal / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page This Is A Direct Appeal.

Sophia Light 24 Jun 2018 00:15

This story set after the events of Voct's excellent work Metafiction (which you should read first.) This is not the much-awaited sequel - just my imaginings of what happened after.

It's also been kicking around my draft box for literal years, so I think it's time to push it out of the nest.

Agent Hotaru Morisato has become increasingly inspired by philosophical concerns since her retirement from fieldwork.

The Solid Archive made its first appearance in The Lucky Dinosaur.

Last edited on 24 Jun 2018 00:31 by Sophia Light Show more

Taffeta 24 Jun 2018 00:47

Man, I haven't even started reading the tale and the concept of more C-Sharp has already got me reaching for the upvote button.

ETA: k, so: I have really, really, really complicated feelings about the use of meta in works like this, and while I think that it's generally better to handle this kind of thing in tales instead of SCP documents proper, I still tend to shy away from stuff that's this obviously meta. It's interesting seeing how the Foundation actually pieces together the reality of site-wide tropes such as 'there is no canon' and the aftereffects of lolFoundation in-universe, but I'm not sure that it's interesting enough to sustain a tale of this length on its own.

I was pleasantly surprised by the ending, though. For all the grand-scale implications that meta introduces into the world, I tend to swing towards the low-key approach (see also minmin's SCP-2747), and returning the story back to a more grounded scale does a lot to reduce the feeling of head-assery or otherwise becoming disconnected and tapping out from the narrative as a whole. And that last line. Awww.

All in all, this is definitely one of the better approaches to the 'Foundation has a meeting about the meta calamity' idea, and it's executed well. Dialogue pops, prose is simple and functional, and even if I'm intrinsically turned off by the idea, I enjoyed the execution enough to leave my vote at a neutral. Glad to see you back-ish-kinda, Light.

Last edited on 24 Jun 2018 01:23 by Taffeta Show more

(account deleted) 24 Jun 2018 03:06

I felt like this got a little too direct in some places, but then I reminded myself of the title. I think that anything addressing metafiction as a concept is tricky to pull off in general, and this is effective for what it is.

Also, I've been thinking lately that I want to write the Foundation as less horrific in the next coming months, and their 'direct appeal' has reinforced that intention now. Poor folks.

TheShrike 24 Jun 2018 06:58

Hawt.
But seriously, I like it, along with the happily ever after :)

It did bring a thought to my head though. If someone makes a new story, well-written and all, cross-linked to this one, where hotaru and knight die grisly deaths… Would it get downvoted for meta reasons?

I'd like to say I'd downvote it but… No, if it was entertaining, it'd still get my +1. Sorry, sub-universe. My empathy doesn't extend to fictional characters, even when the fiction assigns those characters non-fictional emotions. You're doomed!

Edit: that's not strictly true, many stories are enjoyable because they trigger our sense of empathy, so I guess it might be more proper to say my morality doesn't extend to them.

Last edited on 24 Jun 2018 07:01 by TheShrike Show more

Kalinin 25 Jun 2018 18:51

This latest exercise in the tiresome meta trend that's affected this site is prone to a lot of the same underlying issues that other pieces have. Reliance on the novelty of "hey, we're in a fictional universe" that wore off years ago. The navel-gazing of self-referential site history. The fanfic-level wish fulfillment that ended up closing this piece. Treating the development of a story as secondary to the establishment of a character(s).

There's a reason that stories tend to resonate more than people waving their arms at each other and directly explaining things. When the characters in the story are literally doing that at me, I'm done.

(account deleted) 03 Jul 2018 02:55

While I don't like the use of meta references, I feel like this is probably the best they can be. I think having them speak directly to the reader really hurt the story, and I actually quite enjoyed the ending where they decided it didn't matter that much and they were just going to live their lives anyway. I think that's a good message, just be happy while you can if you can.

No vote, I feel to conflicted on it.

RU5TR3D 17 Mar 2020 15:51

I really like this.

I'm given this concept some thought before and I've come to the conclusion that, a character in a story does have free will, in a sense, because an author has a chance of making an idea where a character lives a good life, or dies. In this story there was a chance that all of these characters can't change anything and end themselves because the can't handle being fictional. That means that their lives aren't predetermined, and their world is not completely at the whims of another.

I'm sorry if none of this makes sense. I'm a reader, not a writer, so I can't articulate this idea very well.

P.S. I made this idea so to resolve my struggle with the concept of "what if I'm a fictional character", that happened a long time ago, so if anyone else has the same struggle, I hope I am coherent enough to have helped.

Oh yeah, +1.

Last edited on 17 Mar 2020 15:52 by RU5TR3D Show more